CO-OP Champions is a Netherlands based, specialized cooperative research and advisory institute promoting learning & leadership among cooperatives. Our database covers some 800 in food and agribusiness worldwide and 3000 cooperatives in our home market, the Netherlands.

Many cooperatives struggle to preserve member ownership as their businesses continue to grow. Just to illustrate this with the ‘onslaught’ in Australia since 2007: Tatura, Sunbeam, Dairy Farmers Group, Golden Circle, ABB Grain, AWB, and Bega - once cooperatives of some sort, for different reasons they have all fallen into the hands of (foreign) investors. On 31 May 2011, SunRice just escaped, but for how long? And which one’s next - one doesn’t dare asking. Is Fonterra going to retain “100% farmer ownership and control”, following the introduction of its Trading Among Farmers scheme in November 2012?

We believe farmers should really think about building up their strategic postion in the food chain. You might not want to sell out now and lose the race of worldwide industry ...